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by staticsky



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 00:04:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5518073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staticsky/pseuds/staticsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moniwa realizes he and Ushijima are an odd pair.</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [samanthastral](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samanthastral/gifts).



**i.**     It’s a rare occasion for the Ushijima household to be bustling with movement.

In their case, it usually means something’s not quite right.

“Socks! Where are the socks?!”

Moniwa sprints down the hall from their bedroom to the laundry room, nearly tripping from slipping on the hardwood floor in the process. Thankfully, Ushijima is there to catch him by the waist.

“Kaname,” he looks right into Moniwa’s eyes, trying his best to sound convincing. This is, perhaps, the closest he gets to pleading. “Slow down. It’s alright, I don’t—”

Moniwa sounds out of breath as he practically wheezes in Ushijima’s arms, “An athlete can’t play without _socks_!”

With a resigned sigh, he straightens the two of them, and Moniwa immediately scurries to the washing machine.

“How are _all_ of your nice socks in the wash?! These are soaked, you can’t wear them!”

Ushijima glances at his watch to check the time. It’s already a quarter past four.

“Kaname, I have to head out now,” he calls out, going back to zip up his suitcase.

“But the socks!” Moniwa finally reappears looking completely spent—with nothing to show for all his efforts, no less. “Do you want to take mine, at least?” he suddenly asks, bending over to remove the socks on his own two feet.

“Kaname, really. I’ll only be gone for three days.”

But Moniwa’s already pulled one sock off and he’s working on the other.

“I can just buy socks from any convenience store.”

Moniwa won’t have it though, and somehow manages to look accomplished as he hands Ushijima his sleep socks.

“Wear them!”

“Your feet are going to freeze going back to bed,” Ushijima mumbles, frowning slightly at the misshapen but colorful pair in his hand.

Moniwa only smiles at Ushijima’s concern, and he leans up to show his gratitude with a kiss right on the corner of Ushijima’s lips. “And you’re going to be late!”

He’s right. Ushijima’s team is expected to meet up before catching their 5 AM train.

“Now go!”

Ushijima reaches over and pulls Moniwa into a one-armed hug, taking a moment to press his lips against his forehead. Moniwa, in turn, wraps both arms around Ushijima and squeezes.

Ushijima’s lips linger by Moniwa’s head as he murmurs, “I’ll be back soon.”

“Yeah… Have a safe trip.”

And it’s only after Ushijima disappears out the front door completely that Moniwa’s shoulders drop, his body finally out of energy. “Alright,” he sighs to an empty house. “Time for bed…”

 

 

 **ii.**     In many ways, Moniwa realizes he and Ushijima are an odd pair.

Their days are essentially synched differently, and they live completely different lifestyles.

When Ushijima isn’t out traveling somewhere, he rises extraordinarily early to go jogging every morning, while Moniwa often finds himself up late at night typing away at his laptop.

Ushijima’s appeared on TV more times than Moniwa could count at this point—his various V.League matches, coverage of Japan’s National volleyball team, that one supposed scandal with a rising model who was really just an ardent volleyball fan. Even his long held rivalry with Sakusa never stopped garnering a lot of attention since their university days.

Meanwhile, he’s positive his own mug would likely only ever appear on a news channel as a victim of a freak accident. He can see the headlines now— _Local Man Trips and Ruins Everything_ , or perhaps _Man vs. Food: Local Dies from Pufferfish Gone Wrong_.

Suddenly his takeout sushi doesn’t seem so appetizing.

Setting his chopsticks down, Moniwa lifts his arms into the air, pulling his back taut to stretch his sore back. He’s been hunched over this desk for hours, trying to wrinkle out the last kinks in his project.

Moniwa had hung up his volleyball shoes for good after high school, hitting the books hard to continue technical training. While he’d always assumed he’d continue his high school track and pursue civil engineering for higher education, a computer science course he’d chosen to take, merely to fill the necessary credits, suddenly made him aware of his knack for coding too. Nearly seven years and two degrees later, however, Moniwa’s still working away at nearly entry-level pay to “gain the necessary experience” for software engineering.

He can feel Ushijima silently chiding him for putting up with all of this work when it seems like the “upcoming promotion” they’ve dangled in his face for years now is nothing but a ploy to keep paying him a fraction more than the interns.

“You’re not getting any younger, Kaname,” he says, thinly veiling his concern with every new group of interns Moniwa describes to him at the start of each term. But Moniwa always puts Ushijima’s worries to rest with a comfortable smile.

“You put your all into volleyball because that’s your calling.

“This is mine.”

 

 

 **iii.**     The two of them had met in college.

Moniwa looks back at their first few encounters quite fondly. In fact, his face brightens right up anytime someone asks and he gets to retell the events on how it all happened.

Ushijima, on the hand, finds the whole ordeal rather embarrassing.

After all, it’s hard to stomach his first-year self—hunched over on the side of the road, emptying the contents of his stomach from alcohol-induced nausea—being called “cute” whenever Moniwa narrates how their story begins.

A picture of their resulting first date, however, proves otherwise. (Though at the time, neither of them had realized that’s what it was. _Their first date._ )

Moniwa can’t help but smile seeing Ushijima’s cowlicked hair in the shot every time. Ushijima argues that’s because it’s the _only_ thing you can make out in the blurry selfie attempt. In his defense, his selfie-taking skills have improved considerably since. As it turns out, you just need the right person to want to capture memories with to get you to learn how to take a proper selfie.

Ushijima’s favorite photo to dig out is one from their Coming of Age ceremony. The two of them were dressed in their best suits.

Moniwa cringes every time he sees it.

“I look like a child,” he pouts. What he doesn’t say is _‘standing next to you,’_ because even if Ushijima was only a head taller, something about his sharp features and perfect posture just screams full-fledged adult next to Moniwa’s near-baby face.

“You look like yourself, Kaname,” Ushijima assures him.

_‘Perfect in every way.’_

(Funnily enough, this shot is also the pinnacle of Ushijima’s selfie portfolio—right over Moniwa’s shoulder, you can spot a petulant Oikawa and an Iwaizumi with a face so red, you’d be worried for his blood pressure. Moniwa was shocked to see how clearly you could make them out in the corner, but Ushijima just completely burst into laughter for once.  

“Yeah,” he’ll sigh, sounding almost wistful for their teen years again. “This one is my favorite.”)

 

 

 **iv.**     The biggest speed bump in their relationship came right around their undergraduate graduation.

Moniwa always has to preface the whole ordeal with, “It was a genuine misunderstanding!”

And to his credit, a text from Ushijima—infamous amongst his circle for always opting to call instead of text—that read _‘We need to talk,’_ just screamed all sorts of ominous and bad. In fact, Moniwa almost threw up himself on his way to meet Ushijima after that, unable to stomach what he assumed would become the inevitable.  

When Ushijima announced he’d received several offers for various V.League teams, Moniwa wished that he _had_ actually thrown up earlier so he wouldn’t feel so nauseous in this fancy restaurant. Osaka had the strongest teams in recent years, and this would be it—they’d part their ways after graduating, he’d just become some memory of silly college shenanigans—

“I want you to take this,” Ushijima went on to say, sliding a small manila envelope across the table. Moniwa’s fears were only confirmed by the way the envelope bulged in the center—that must be their ring. The matching ones they’d gotten for Christmas.

Swallowing thickly, Moniwa tried to slide it back across. “I’d… really like it if you kept it, actually.”

Ushijima’s brows knitted then, as he pushed the envelope back. “Please. Take it.”

 _‘Oh god,’_ Moniwa thought to himself, ‘ _don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry—‘_

“Ushijima…” His voice was already hoarse, his throat threatening to clench up. “I really. I really can’t take this. I can’t, I just… I can’t.”

Silence fell between the two as Ushijima stared straight at him. Moniwa just wanted to curl up under the heated gaze, unable to lift his head anymore for their eyes to meet.

He’s trying to find the right words to say, _“I’ll leave now, thanks for everything, you were the love of my life—“_ when Ushijima's words cut right through his thoughts.

“Kaname, I’m getting the impression that you do not want to stay with me anymore.”

And Moniwa’s heart just dropped as he wanted to shout, _“Isn’t that you?”_

“Will you open the envelope at least?” Ushijima sighed, folding his hands in front of him. Moniwa noticed then that Ushijima’s fists were clenched abnormally tight. _‘It must be important to him,’_ Moniwa decided, and a part of him could relate. Closure was important, after all. So he slowly took the envelope, and began to undo the clasp.

 _‘Moment of truth,’_ he told himself after a long inhale, tipping the opening towards his shaking palm, and out comes—

“A key?”

Ushijima’s nod was tight, and he’s staring so hard at it his gaze could have bore a second hole through the top. “It’s. For my new place,” he grunted, voice almost too low to make out. “Our place, actually, if. If you’ll come.”

It was getting very difficult not to burst into tears when his whole face felt unbearably hot, but Moniwa just barely managed to keep it together long enough to say, “You know I can’t go to Osaka—I just got accepted to grad school here, and—“

“Osaka?”

“And I don’t know if I can move further south than this, really, I mean I’m already far enough from my parents as it is, and—“

“Kaname, who’s going to Osaka?” Ushijima finally got a word.

“Us?” But he immediately shook his head, “I mean, I mean you. You’re going to Osaka.”

“Why am I going to Osaka?”

“What do you mean ‘why?’ There’s no way you didn’t get offers from the teams there, I mean, you’re—you’re Ushijima Wakatoshi!”

Ushijima reached over to take Moniwa hand, desperate to hold Moniwa’s attention for longer than a second or two. “Kaname. I’m only moving to 3-chome. I just wanted to get a bigger place… if you’re coming to stay with me.”

That’s when Moniwa broke. Maybe it’s the load that’s immediately lifted off of his shoulders, maybe it was shock, or maybe he was just unbelievably mad that Ushijima had made a decision that large without talking to him about it firsr. But public establishment be damned, he really, _really_ wanted to pummel Ushijima with punches at that moment, and he voiced his desire as such. Ushijima could only quirk his lips into a relieved smile as he went on to ask,

“So I take it that’s a yes?”

 

 

 **v.**     Exhausted doesn’t even begin to explain how sore his muscles are as Ushijima clambers onto his apartment complex’s elevator. He’s running primarily on auto-pilot as he reaches a familiar front door and punches in the sequence to the keypad.

“I’m home,” he calls out, aching to see Moniwa scrambling to the front door to greet him.

Instead, he’s met with an unfamiliar silence, his own movements echoing through the hallway.

“Kaname?”

Dropping his gym bag on the sofa, he spots a familiar mess of curly hair hunched over a laptop keyboard on the dining table. Ushijima rests his hand on Moniwa’s head gently, fingers running through the curls before they skim across his cheek. Moniwa stirs from the skin-on-skin contact, almost nuzzling the back of Ushijima’s lingering hand.

“Wakatoshi…?” His voice is soft and small, clearly still laden with sleep, but Ushijima finds his lips spreading into a smile anyways. He watches Moniwa rub at his eyes fondly, before crouching down to meet his gaze with outstretched arms. Moniwa, expecting a hug, leans forward into the embrace. However, his hands start clenching Ushijima’s clothes when he finds himself lifted off his chair all of a sudden.

“Wakatoshi?” Moniwa asks again, sharper this time and laced with confusion. His head knows he should be asking what they’re doing or where they’re going, but he can’t seem to string together the right words in his half-asleep state. Instead, he hangs on for the ride and watches on silently as the two enter their bedroom.

“You’re tired,” he hears Ushijima murmur as he’s set down at last on their shared mattress. Moniwa can only smile as Ushijima settles onto their sheets right beside him, falling face-first into his pillow.

“I’m tired,” Moniwa begins, echoing the words while turning to his side to curl up beside Ushijima, “but you’re exhausted.”

Ushijima seems to have no qualms with that, only blindly reaching over with one arm to pull Moniwa closer to him. As he gets closer, the two rearrange themselves until Moniwa is comfortably spooning against Ushijima.

“Sleep,” Ushijima mumbles into Moniwa’s hair, pressing a kiss into the soft locks.

Moniwa is more than happy to comply to the pseudo-request—but not before finding Ushijima’s hands and linking their fingers together.

“Welcome home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays! Hope you have a wonderful end of the year, and a great start to 2016!


End file.
